(2008) Down Where My Love Lives (59 page)

I leaned against the van and whispered, "You sold my truck?"

Jake pulled the three-by-five-inch card from his shirt pocket and said, "Well, if you're in the market."

"No." I waved my hand. "No thanks. I just thought ... since I was driving by. . ."

His wife opened the door and shaded her eyes against the sun, and two kids pressed their noses against the glass.

"Hey, Dylan, you want some lunch? I just made some spaghetti."

The kids' fingers were covered in spaghetti sauce, as was the window.

I stepped forward. "No, ma'am. Thank you. I won't be a minute; thanks anyway."

Jake stepped forward and spoke softly. "Dylan, I'm real sorry. It's just that-" He pointed behind him. "This guy offered me-"

I shook my head and patted him on the shoulder. "No, Jake, it's not ... I'm sorry. You did right."

"I know how you loved that truck. I was surprised when you wanted to trade it."

"Well, we're trying to adopt, and-"

"I can keep an eye out."

I stepped into the van. "Thanks. That'd be just fine." I cranked the engine and shifted the lever down into drive. "Thanks again."

Jake held an imaginary phone to his ear and called above the sound of crunching gravel. "If I see anything, I'll give you a holler."

I waved out the window and drove slowly toward Digger.

A MILE OUT OF JAKE'S DRIVEWAY, SOMETHING thumped the underside of the hood, and then the air conditioner turned from cold to hot. I checked the rearview mirror and saw bits and pieces of my shredded compressor belt strewn across the road. I rolled down the windows, felt the heat blast my face, and missed my truck.

Bryce's place was immaculate and empty. The only signs of life were five crows that had lit atop the center screen and squawked at me when I emerged from the tree line. I walked through the trailer, across the deck, and back into the woods where the obstacle course had been extended. Somebody had brought in some heavy machinery and extended the run section down into the soggy lowlands. The wet, grassy ground ran beneath the oaks and around the bamboo for almost a mile before it encountered the edge of the swamp, which fluctuated with the rain.

By the time I reached the swamp, sweat trickled from every pore in my body, sticking my shirt to me like a vacuum seal. When I reached the edge of the water, I didn't feel like going back, so I sat up on a hickory stump and tried to exhale my anger. That's when I saw the rope.

It was new black nylon, looped around a tree and tied in a hitching knot much like someone would use to tie up a horse. One pull on the free end and it would pull itself loose. The rope led me around the tree and about six feet away to a fourteen-foot johnboat. It floated empty, dry, well used, and complete with one hand-oiled oar. I looked off into the water and saw that as recently as today, someone had paddled through the pollen. The trail had yet to erase itself in the water.

I pulled the rope, pushed off, and dipped the oar in the water, following the cracks in the pollen. They weren't too hard to follow, and neither was the small canal that frequent use had created between the trees. Nighttime would be another story, but between fresh scars on the trees and places that were only wide enough for the boat, the path was hard to miss in the daylight. A mile passed, then another, and finally another.

Three hours later, I tried to find the sun and realized I had made a big mistake. I was about to spend the night in the swamp. If I'd had any sense at all, I'd have looped myself to a tree, lain down in the bottom of that boat, pulled my shirt over my head to protect myself from mosquitoes, and tried to get some sleep. Problem was, I wasn't feeling very sensible.

I poled another hour into the darkness until I could scarcely see twenty feet in front of my face. I set down the oar, coasted across the black water, and checked Papa's watch, which I think told me it was after eight, and only then did I smell the smoke.

Trying not to bang the side of the boat, I poled and paddled closer. Finally I sat down in the back and inched toward a cluster of trees. High above me, maybe thirty feet in the air, I saw a single flame, flickering like a kerosene lantern. It shone through what looked like slats in a tree fort, except this fort was about the size of our bedroom at the house. The timbers supporting it were rough-cut beams that stretched across the cypress trees shooting up out of the swamp.

The light from the lantern shone down through the hole in the floor and illuminated a rope ladder. I tied up the boat, stepped quietly onto the ladder, and pulled myself up. Some thirty-five feet later, I poked my head through the trapdoor and looked around. What I saw amazed me.

The roof above was made of aluminum sheeting, supported with rough-cut trusses, making the inside watertight. The tongue-and-groove cypress floor had been swept clean and looked loosely octagonal in shape. The eight walls also were cypress plank, and each had been fitted with a window.

On two walls there was a kitchen of sorts. A large farmhouse sink had been sunk in the countertop; it was fed by a hand pump connected to a series of pipes that disappeared through the floor and evidently into the tannic black water of the Salkehatchie below. I worked the pump, and crystal-clear water flowed out, meaning someone had either dug a well or tapped into a spring. Maybe both.

Across the room was a built-in bunk, and on the bedside table sat a worn copy of Herodotus. Occupying the rest of the room were two chairs, a shelf with about a hundred Louis L'Amour books, and a large footlocker. Leaning in a rack along the last wall rested three rifles and as many shotguns. One of the rifles was fitted with a large telescopic sight, making it look like some sort of sniper rifle. Four handguns-two revolvers and two automatics-hung from nails driven into the wall. Each was oiled, and despite the fact that most had a matte black finish, each glistened slightly in the pulsating light behind me.

The idea had crossed my mind that Bryce had simply built himself a summer home, which was odd given that he could have owned a slope-sided chalet in Aspen. But my other idea said that someone had built a getaway shack, hidden in the middle of nowhere, that allowed him to keep an eye on his moonshine still, marijuana plants, or meth lab with little fear of intrusion.

My shadow stretched across the room like Peter Pan's, and my heart pounded like a war drum. I looked down into the water at the boat, around the room, and in search of fading shadows. All of that told me one thing: I could not make it out of this swamp tonight, and the best opportunity I had was to sleep right here. Yet I also knew that whoever had built this place and left that light on would be back, and based on the difficulty of finding this place, I wasn't sure he wanted to be found.

I stepped toward the wall and lifted one of the revolvers off the nail. A Smith & Wesson .357. I clicked open the cylinder and found it loaded. I stuffed it inside my pants and stretched out on the bed, where for two hours I kept my eyes pried wide open. Finally sleep set in, and I dozed off. Sometime later, I woke to the sound of someone standing at the sink.

I cracked open my eyes, but the lantern had been dimmed. I could see the form of a person standing some eight feet from me. I slipped the revolver from my belt and lay as still as I possibly could. From the smell in the room and the repetitive motion of the man's arms, I figured he was cleaning a fish.

Only when I sat up did the bunk creak. I slowly aimed the pistol at the broad dark frame in front of me and waited. It was useless to try to aim, because my hand was shaking like a leaf. When the person turned, and the lantern lit his face, I nearly lost my bladder again.

I lay back, shaking my head, and dropped the pistol on the floor. "Bryce! What the-!?"

Bryce clicked on a gas stove and threw the fish filets onto the skillet. He poured in a touch of oil, then reached out a window over the ledge and lifted the lid on a propane grill that seemed somehow built into the side of the tree house. He used some tongs to flip over whatever was on there and returned to the fish. He added seasoning and some pepper and popped the tab on a Chek soda. Then he pumped the hand pump in the sink, filling a glass of water, which he swigged down in three gulps.

While the fish sizzled and the grill cooked whatever it was cooking, Bryce set the table with two plates, two forks, and two glasses of water. He pulled plates from above his head, flipped the fish one last time, and then slid two filets each onto the plates. He reached across the ledge and pulled in what appeared to be two ears of corn and two baked potatoes, wrapped in aluminum foil.

While I worked to reinsert my jaw into its rightful place, Bryce sat down and turned his attention to his food. Beneath the light, I could see he was decked out in all black, his feet were bare, and his .45 was tucked in its shoulder holster on the left side of his chest. He looked at me and continued eating as if he were judging the food for its culinary details.

I sat at the table and looked at the breakfast before me while Bryce took small bites and paid me little mind.

"How long have you had this place?"

Bryce chewed, pushed his food around his plate. If he heard me, he didn't appear to care.

I tried again. "What do you do out here?"

Bryce looked around, scraped the last of his fish onto his fork, and filled his glass again. Conversations with Bryce were often one-sided. He'd talk when he felt like it.

I looked at my watch and knew that I'd been gone too long. "Bryce, I don't mean to be unkind, but I need to get going, and I need some help getting out of here."

Bryce finished off another glass of water, then walked to a bare wall and opened a shoulder-width door that led onto a balcony, four feet by four feet square and surrounded by a railing. On the balcony sat a wooden box fitted with a porcelain white toilet seat. With his back to me, Bryce lifted the seat and peed through the hole.

I listened as the stream fell thirty-five feet to the water below. I tried again. "Well, I need to get home to Maggie."

Bryce shut the door and spoke for the first time. "She's fine." He washed his hands in the sink, sat back down, picked up his corn, and started into it like a typewriter.

"Bryce." I set down my fork and wiped my mouth. I noticed that since being up here, I hadn't swatted at a single mosquito. "How long have you been watching my house?"

He shrugged.

"Why?"

He grew very still, and his eyes glazed over as if someone else had entered the room. He cleared his plate and then climbed down the ladder to the boat. Alongside it sat a small black-and-green two-man canoe.

We loaded into his boat, and with the two of us paddling and Bryce's sense of direction, we banked the canoe onto the grassy landing below the obstacle course before daylight. I stepped out and turned to thank him, but he had already backed up and was poling himself back into the swamp. When I tried to open my mouth, he just waved. For the first time since I'd met Bryce, I saw an expression of pain on his facethe kind that had sewn itself into the sinews of his person.

I turned down our drive at daylight and pulled around the house. Blue came trotting out to meet me. Maggie too. She was wrapped in a blanket, and her short hair was sticking up as if she hadn't slept.

She saw that I was okay and looked as though she wanted to say something, but the words didn't make it out of her mouth. She returned to the barn, her blanket dragging on the ground, climbed into the loft, and then shut the door and clicked on the AC unit.

Blue licked my fingers, and his quiet whining told me what Maggie's silence and my heart already had-that I'd been stupid to leave, selfish to go to Jake's, and that spending the night out was a dumb thing to do.

FROM THE KITCHEN, I WATCHED MAGGIE WALK OUT of the barn and into her vegetable garden-a small forty-byforty-foot patch where she experimented with growing vegetables. Ordinarily, it was overgrown with produce; now it sat overrun with weeds. Even the raccoons had quit coming around.

I poured her a cup of coffee and met her midway through what was once the tomato section. She took it and sipped beneath the broad rim of her hat. I tipped her hat back slightly and then leaned on a tomato stake. "You sleep any?"